Hong Kong Explained

Updated: Sep 15, 2019

Read about what's going on in Hong Kong,

Written by Eric Luo

Illustration by Vibhu Venkatesh

Since March 2019, people in Hong Kong have been taking to the streets to protest against the Chinese take-over of Hong Kong. It all started with a Hong Kong man, aka a Hong Konger, who murdered his girlfriend and fled to Taiwan to escape authorities.

Unfortunately, the Hong Kong government could not prosecute the man because there was no extradition treaty between Hong Kong and Taiwan, which would allow the criminal to be deported to Hong for his trial. However, this means that the Hong Kong citizens could be deported to China for prosecution, which is much more severe than those in Hong Kong. This, obviously, led to these huge protests.

The protests were the beginning of a larger movement in Hong Kong against Chinese influence in the country. Despite the extradition bill being taken out of the vote in the state legislature, the people of Hong Kong are still protesting in the streets against expanding Chinese influence.

This leads to more and more public anger in the citizens of Hong Kong because they believe that they deserve their own sovereignty as most of the government of Hong Kong is separate from China as the only thing that Hong Kong relies on China for is military.

The protests are still ongoing as part of the continued resistance to Chinese control over the semi-autonomous state of Hong Kong that is still fighting for its full independence from the oppressive state of China.